Tuesday, January 6, 2009

Safa Joudeh writing from the occupied Gaza Strip, Live from Palestine, 5 January 2009

(Safa Joudeh is a master's candidate in public policy at Stony Brook University in the US. She returned to Gaza in September 2007 where she currently works as a freelance journalist)

".....At the moment, and in the midst of the aggression, it is hard to make sense of the current situation or make future predictions. It's hard to come to grips with the numbers and the extent of our losses. It's hard even to remember a time when basic necessities such as food, water, warmth and daylight weren't a luxury. At this point, bare human instinct is at work -- the need to protect your loved ones, the need to ensure shelter and the instinct of fight or flight. We have fled for too long, Gaza is our last refuge and our home after we were displaced from what is now called Israel. All this happened 60 years ago. What more could they want? We have nowhere left to go. They have disregarded every single international law there is.Now is the time to defend ourselves, now is the time for resistance."